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Zoarari
The Zoarari are a collectivist race of insectoids and a member of the Interplanetary Oversight Commission. Their homeworld, part of the TRAPPIST-1 system, is also called Zoarari. Biology The Zoarari resemble centipedes; they average about two feet long, with thirty legs, numerous feather-like feelers, and large, hard shells on their backs. On the front of their bodies is a large, flat gelatinous circle bordered by eye-like orbs and a mouth. The Zoarari can share memories, feelings and ideas between individuals through touch via this circle. Their eye-like orbs are actually their ears; they 'see' through the feelers along their back, and sense touch through their legs. Zoarari have a slightly shorter lifespan than humans, living an average of fifty years. The vast majority of Zoarari are hermaphrodites, capable of reproducing with either eggs or sperm. Zoa often reproduce in complex polyamorous networks in which "nodes" are often Zo from other Zoa. There is a disease among the Zoarari that corrupts transferred memories. Zo that have the condition have become a social underclass because no one will transfer memories with them; these Zo are quarantined on one continent on the Zoarari homeworld and have since formed a Zoa of their own, much like a leper colony. Society The Zoarari are a collectivist society. They perceive individuals like cells in a single living being that is their species; the species is called the Zoarari, societies are called Zoa, and an individual is a Zo. Zoarari raise their children in communities called Zoi, where children may adopt mentors as "parents" freely, though they often choose their biological parents as mentors. Thus a ‘family’ in Zoarari culture is made up of individuals who share memories with each other on a regular basis. A Zoarari ‘family’ can end up being hundreds of individuals, and occasionally even an entire Zoi. The Zoarari operate politically by building consensus between Zoa through memory-transfer; political conflicts are extremely rare, and most Zo come to hold similar political beliefs as they adopt each other's perspectives. One of the troubles that the Zoarari faced when first-contact occurred was the introduction of ‘lying’ as a concept. Before first-contact, Zoarari were almost always truthful and upstanding, generally working towards the betterment of society, because if they weren’t, everyone would know about their actions, and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to construct an alibi. Lying remains extremely difficult for most Zo. Due to their perception of individuals as cells, it is a mainstream practice for Zoarari to consume the bodies of their deceased. This can be considered a burial ritual by those not of the Zoarari, though the Zoarari don’t see it as such, being that the memories of the deceased continue to live on in the members of their community. Rather, they see it as a returning of resources to the collective. Zoarari consider gender as highly fluid and performative; the idea of individuals having fixed gender identities is foreign to them. However, unlike the Myphym, they do understand gender itself; they consider it more as a feeling or emotion they have than as an identity category, as in "I'm feeling feminine today." History The Zoarari have long been unified as a species due to their biological ability to transfer memories. They evolved to burrow in the soft earth underneath the rocky surface of their homeworld; they developed tool use in order to more easily maintain the vast labyrinthine cities they had built, and domesticated and farmed the smaller creatures on the surface. Their memory-transfer ability also allowed them to transfer knowledge and make significant leaps in philosophy, science and critical theory, and they eventually became bored of progress on their planet and took to space travel, where they quickly met the Myphym, who made their home on the neighboring planet. The Zoarari are currently undergoing an unprecedented shift in their social structure. For the first time in their species' history, Zoa are separated by massive distances that severely limit their memory-transfer abilities. As a result, they have recently been unable to build consensus over significant political issues. The effects of this schism, called the Rift by the Zoarari, remains to be seen, and little to nothing is known about it by the IOC.